Lecture by Nina Kazanina: Going Mental

Humans perception and behaviour fascinates and perplexes in its sophistication. What is the inner machinery that yields rich, complex and – as I will demonstrate – not always veridical representations of the reality? Some of its most interesting properties lie in its use of abstract, symbolic representations.

I will discuss how abstract representations emerge in child development during word and grammar learning, focusing on cases where linguistic representations do not map to the objective reality in a straightforward, one-to-one manner. I will also demonstrate how abstract representations are used in real-time processing of language by adults, in particular, for making inferences and expectations about upcoming input both in an adjacent or a more distant context. These phenomena will be discussed in a broader context of what it means to develop, represent or employ abstract categories more globally, including in the domain of art.